How does this work when the capitalists working hours are zero? You cant divide by 0?
It doesn’t imply that he works for it, only that “he” makes that per hour.
lemmy.dbzer0.com solves the capitalist problem at least.
That’s the secret, their wealth is a permanent division by zero. At a certain point, it’s all made up
If you’re rich enough, you can pay people to try for you. Which, over relatively short time lines, is kinda like being able to.
If Elon Musk finds a $100 bill in the street, it isn’t worth his time to pick it up
Meanwhile, if your yearly salary is less than $315,360 it is worth your time to pick up a penny.
math
Assume picking up a penny takes one second. There are 31536000 seconds in a year (roughly, let’s not get into leap seconds). Multiply that by $.01, the value of a penny. Then you get the salary such that across the year you’re making a penny every second. A caveat to this is that even if you’re making more than this you need to debate what “worth your time” means because it’s still a penny you wouldn’t have either way, but I think this is enough to illustrate the wealth gap.
Small edit: To add to that last point, what I mean is that it’s not like you stop earning your yearly salary while you’re picking up a penny.
I mean to be fair, you wouldn’t be getting paid $315,360 for a years worth of work, you’d be getting paid $315,360 for 7.488 million seconds in a year (ish, 40 hour weeks, no missed days)
So really to have picking up a penny in one second be “worth” your time, you’d only have to be making $74,880 a year or less
It’s always worth it when you’re on the clock.
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Yeah bro I was thinking like I don’t make 300k a year and I still don’t pick up pennies…
Man, I’m not gonna math that out myself; but that sounds more realistic and I choose to believe you
Picking up a penny takes way longer than one second! At least 5, if it includes stopping, and even longer if you check it out and put it in your wallet!
😁
I’d have to include another 30 seconds to unlock my phone and search something like “is 1956 penny worth anything”, then another 20 seconds for disappointed reflecting.
You just need to remember the silver cutoff dates on silver coins. Pennies are only worthwhile if they aren’t a Lincoln penny. Even the commemorative pennies with the centennial backs of Lincoln are like a dollar mint for the whole set. Wheat pennies and stuff like that should be obvious just looking at the penny.
There are specific valuable pennies that are worth more than their copper value, like steel pennies from 1943, copper wheat error penny (also 1943), double die (I think from the 50s?), Indian head (pre-1909) etc.
There’s obviously a huge incentive to know whether your currency is above face value, so I feel like 99.9% of notable coinage has already been removed.
When your boomer/greatest gen relatives graduate from this planet, it’s always a good idea to look between the cushions of that mid-century sofa they couldn’t part with, and everywhere else that can hold such treasures. Sweet old Meemaw and Peepaw may have left the musty davenport in the will, but overlooked the actually good stuff!
Although a dog may have peed on it, so wash your hands!
source: owner of a dog that proudly pees on any foreign item on the street.
If you’re making less than $300k, can you really complain about your money covered in dog piss? /s hopefully obviously lol
Unless picking up the bill stops someone from earning for some reason, most people should earn their hourly wage plus $100
Is this part not showing for you or did you just miss it?
Small edit: To add to that last point, what I mean is that it’s not like you stop earning your yearly salary while you’re picking up a penny.
That’s what I meant as well - we are saying the same thing. I think I misread your comment as that being the threshold to make it worth it. Don’t mind me, my brain is mush after work lol
Idk, I think he’d pick it up because it’s liquid wealth. The majority of his wealth is tied to the speculative market. I’m uncertain how much he could even make cashing his winnings out of the Stockmarket. Assuming he withdrew all assets and liquidated them. I’m sure it would be a ridiculous amount still.
If you have $100,000, then $1 is worth about as much to you (relative to your net worth) as $1,000,000 is to someone with $100,000,000,000…
Let that sink in, and then ask yourself why billionaires don’t pay more taxes…
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Where I live, in Washington state, there isn’t an income tax however, finally, they’re implementing one on people making over 1M/yr. There were people out protesting that definitely don’t make 1M/yr. It’s wild.
I am sincerely curious why anyone who has never & will never earn a million dollars per year, why would they be out on the streets protesting against taxing those who do. Maybe they participate in every protest because they’re always down to party in the streets regardless of the occasion.
Nah, I think their main logic is the slippery slope fallacy, it might be them next! They also probably are just against all taxes all the time which, if you think about that for a singular second, how the fuck would they drive their lifted pickup to a protest against taxation if there were no tax dollars to build roads? They probably also don’t realize/understand that we could hold millionaires to a different standard than us, as it’s unprecedented in America.
Financial obesity? More like socioeconomic cancer.
It’s not just an excess of adipose tissue. It’s a malignant tumor, and it’s capable of metastasizing. It’s already in society’s lymph. We’re cooked.
“Financial obesity” I like that, haven’t heard that before. Is that yours? Or did you hear that somewhere?
I don’t recall where I originally found it, I’ve also seen ‘morbidly wealthy’.
Another banger, anyways have a nice day brother.
But where would the money come from to pay the tax from billionaires? They don’t have cash so they would need to get it from somewhere.
Why should you, I, or anyone care where they get the money from?
A simple answer would be they could sell some of the assets they have which contribute to their classification as a billionaire. If they don’t have the collateral to pay the tax, they’d be able to prove it by no longer being classified as a billionaire, in which case the goal would be achieved with another billionaire being euthanised.
Also, is you get rid of a billionaire, how does that help the people? I’m give you an example. We take all of elon musks assets and socks. Go to the open market to sell them. No one buys them because they don’t want the stocks taken from them, so the people buy them. The sticks are now worth 1/100 of the original value because elons companies are high P/E stocks. So know you turned a “trillion” into 100 billion that the people paid for. You then use that 100 billion to pay for services. It’s gone in 8 months.
Next year you are have no service, no money, and possibly down companies that failed.
I don’t see the point.
Eliminating billionaires will neutralise their ability to manipulate society at the level they currently do.
Money doesn’t originate from the private sector, if it did it would be fraud. The funding of services, in an economy with sovereignty of its currency, originates from legislation through the budgets passed by the relevant agents.
Permitting any entity to grow more powerful than the entity responsible for regulating it is carcinogenic, if not suicidal.
We just need to extend graduated tax brackets all the way up. Currently the highest tax brackets end somewhere at like six figures, and anything above that is taxed the same.
Even 90% taxes on a billion dollars still leaves you with a hundred million in spending money. There’s no way someone needs more than that. In one year? That amount alone could be put in a CD with a 3% APY and you’d make $3,000,000 in interest in one year. There’s no way someone needs even a net-worth higher than $100,000,000, but no one can complain about “only” making that much after taxes in a year.
Especially when you consider that tax rates only apply to the income above the amount specified in the bracket. That 90% would apply to your second billion made in a year. Everything below the first billion gets taxed at the same rates as everyone else in a given bracket, i.e. your first $100,000 in a year gets taxed the same as anyone else’s first $100,000…
Billionaires have no room to complain.
Oh, and those graduated tax brackets should apply the same between capital gains and regular income. Currently, the highest capital gains tax rate in the US is about 20%… comparable to someone making about $45,000 a year in regular income…
That means the highest tax rate someone making money primarily from investments would pay is the same as someone who would be considered at or below the poverty line in most states… And the billionaires are only paying that rate on their “taxable” interest, meaning it ignores all the money they launder through shell companies and writing off large purchases as business expenses…
Poor people can’t write off rent, food, and utilities on their taxes… so why can billionaires write off mansions, yachts, and paintings…?
And you think that kind of system would work? And who is buying the assets?
Why are you defending the tolerance of sociopaths?
If they can’t find a buyer for their assets, they’d could give them away or destroy them. It’s irrelevant how they diminish their hoard, the point is that they cease their possession of it.
But the problem is the “horde” isn’t real in some cases. Like with elon, his wealth is tied to 350 p/e stocks. Overnight his wealth would drop 700 billion of he was removed from ceo or investors priced the stock at 35 p/e.
It’s fairy dust.
If they have billions of dollars, they’re not strapped for cash. They have a whole culture and industry designed around tax “optimization” where they buy private yachts, mansions, paintings, and other “real” assets under shell companies to write those purchases off as “business expenses” to reduce their tax liability. That’s why they “don’t have cash”. Because they deliberately avoid holding cash across fiscal years.
They also have sneaky ways of avoiding capital gains tax by reinvesting dividends in ways that defer taxation indefinitely.
That all needs to change, and the only way to change it is through tax policy.
The only way to defer capital gains taxes should be through certain retirement plans, which are generally used by the working class because billionaires don’t need 401Ks. And they still get taxed at the end of term when the money is withdrawn, and they can’t be withdrawn from early without a tax penalty.
All these exceptions for billionaires written into the fine lines of the tax code that you need to be able to afford a personal accountant and layers of shell companies in order to utilize needs to go away.
Billionaires have the money to pay taxes; we need to stop allowing them to pretend they don’t.
They don’t have a billion dollars. So where did the money come from to pay the tax?
I’ll tell you, it’s you. The consumer.
I bet you think China pays the tarrifs too
Are you deranged? They have net worths in the hundreds of billions of dollars. They make billions more dollars each year. I just explained in detail how they game the tax system to avoid paying taxes on their gains. I’m not going to write it all out for you again just because you missed it the first time.
Yes, obviously their revenue comes from the consumers. In the same way your salary comes from your employer. Money changes hands, that’s the whole point. What difference does that make?
By the way, a significant portion of their revenue (with increasing emphasis lately) comes from business-to-business sales. Not the consumer.
And no, China doesn’t pay the US tariffs. The US importers do, and they pass the costs on to their consumers. What kind of idiotic strawman/red herring was that supposed to be? If I was a moron who thought China pays US tariffs, I wouldn’t be here saying “tax the rich,” would I? Stop deflecting from your plutocrat apologia.
Saying the billionaire don’t have a billion dollars, so where does the cash come from to pay the tax? This is a real question and it’s the reason no one has figured out how to tax them.
Like i said, the “wealth” elon has is backed from stocks at 350 p/e. That money isn’t real. U effectively want to tax something that isn’t real.
“the billionaire don’t have a billion dollars”
Oh yeah, I forgot “billionaire” is what we call someone who doesn’t have a billion dollars…
“No one has figured out how to tax them”
I just explained it in detail, which you continue to ignore. People have figured it out, it’s not that complicated. It just doesn’t get implemented because politicians are bought by corporate dark money lobby groups, and people like you do a lot of footwork obfuscating the situation on the internet by pretending billionaires are poor and penniless.
“the ‘wealth’ elon has is backed from stocks at 350 p/e. That money isn’t real”
Yes, their net worths are inflated (which gives them benefits on loans, which they use to further inflate their wealth). But that’s easy to fix. Either don’t let them declare worths that are higher than reality, or tax them at the net worths they declare.
Either way, that doesn’t change anything I said about how capital gains are taxed, or how they should be taxed.
Get a clue.
But your still didn’t explain where the money comes from.
We also call billionaires billionaires because they have a “net worth” of a billion, but having a billion dollars. Example is elon, is he went to the open market and said he is selling all his stock, he would probably get 100 billion. So good net worth would go from 700 billion to 100 billion because he went from a stock evaluation of 350 p/e to 30-35p/e. So that 600 billion disappeared because it isn’t real.
So we tax wealth that isn’t real, where did the money come from. It didn’t come from thin air, it comes from somewhere.
Your comments across this thread show you took Economics 101 and think you understand shit
So then, where does the money come from then?
If the valuations are bullshit, then the tax code should call them out on it so that valuations wouldn’t be so inflated. If the valuations aren’t bullshit, then they should be able to sell to get the money.
But they aren’t the ones evaluating it, the stock holders and buyers are. Plus i agree they should be able to sell it, but I’m a system where every billionaire is running to the open market to sell stocks for taxes wouldn’t work because other would pull out of the market. So the value is the sticks would install go down to realistic p/e earnings. Essentially wiping out the wealth we are trying to tax.
They are a stock buyer and holder, so they take part in that pricing. If inflated valuations became a detriment, the stocks would be priced accordingly. We shouldn’t desire unrealistic p/e ratios.
We really shouldn’t, and yet tesla is 350p/e
50/hr guy is not welcome in my home, not because of his class but because I don’t like bootlickers and that’s a bootlicker right there.
Ideally we would get them on our side, as we need as many comrades as possible. How to do that, I don’t know. Lost case if they’re a liberal.
Yes but thats nearly impossible, they’d have to be out in the dog house before that’d happen.
I hate to break it to you, but $50/hr is barely $100,000/yr. That’s barely above low income where I live. That is not even remotely your enemy.
If he won’t get out of the way, yes he is.
Exactly why he shouldn’t be acting like that. I didn’t make him a bootlicker, he did. As I said, It’s not his ‘class’ (ie. pay) that bothers me. It’s their unwillingness to jeperdise their precious position while others wallow.
He likely got to the position that he did because he decided to be like that, their is no way for me to change his mind because a person like that won’t risk their position for someone else, thats how they got to where they are in the first place. So unless they believe they will do even slightly better by joining us, they won’t help
Have you only worked at one place your entire life? It would explain they you might not understand where I’m coming from. (no being hostile, actually asking)
Ah, I apologize, I just misunderstood. No, I agree with you completely. Regardless of how much income you have, that kind of attitude is indeed disgusting.
Remember Samuel L Jaskson in Django? All middle managers are that guy. Actively working AGAINST you changing the system. What value is there being in the house if everyone has a house.
Yeah, that your enemy, not the person who makes 40k/hour, and his dividens and net worth skyrockets.
If he’s unwilling to change. Then yes. They are my enemy, if they are unwilling to stay out of it or be convinced otherwise then yes.
Too many of you seem to think you can fundamentally change people’s minds regardless of a person’s lot in life, that’s crazy!
persons like that are often snakey people out for their people and themselves Caring little for the zobified grunts making nothing under them. To
The knew what they were doing when they brown nosed and stepped on colleagues on their way into management positions and we have nothing to offer these dollar driven pricks to get them to turn on their pay masters, their in to deep to lose it now.
Their no point in talking them down when they have little to no reason to stop it, it’s why so many labor strikes turned violent back in the day.
You need to tell them that.
The CEO of my company makes almost $40,000 a day and all he has to do is play kissyface with congressmen.
The mouse at by shared office computer still has a fucking ball in it.
Can we get a picture of the mouse?
Every time someone blames left vs right, Dems vs GOP, this is what I think of. It is really the consolidation of income and wealth with the very few at the top that is the problem.
Fascist use whatever ideology gets them more power. Racism today and Gay Rights tomorrow.
If you can’t see beyond the propaganda you will never understand what is happening.
no thats pragmatism, fascists believe on hierarchy of power and nothing more, everything else is pretext to get whatever they want done, much like you had suggested in the latter half of your comment.
No that is conservative, but I see where you are going.
The book ‘Freakomomics’ deals, among many others, with the similarities between a corporate giant and a regular criminal organisation. In short, petty criminals risk death or prison for only two reasons: a) they feel they have no other choice and b) they are hoping, one day, to become part of the top members. That’s about it. Think about it for a while and the argument is easily transposed to the ‘’‘legal’‘’ corporate world, which also explains why middle managers tend to be obedient assholes who, instead of being mad at those exploiting them, exploit their underlings themselves.
“We don’t want to end the exploitation. We want to become the exploiters!” - Rom, DS9 “Bar Association”.
I had a boss years ago who owned a temporary agency, and I had the pleasure of watching him berate his two receptionists – who made $7 an hour and who had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the success of the business – because his monthly income from the business had dropped from $40,000 to $25,000. Meanwhile he spent his entire day playing solitaire and listening to the Rush Limbaugh show.
Its so fucking easy for em. Maybe we can trick people into liking each other.
Maybe we can abuse religious doctrine that teaches about loving a neighbor or something.
The goyim are to stupid to understand anyways
All we got from that is that since Obama won in 2012, the moment you call out the religious right, liberals and many leftists will go “um, ackchually, real christian are not like that”, all because some attributed his win to being a “good christian” (he didn’t divorce his wife, to then go on wanting to ban abortion, porn, etc.). Basically it turned into yet another wedge issue.
this is just sad. fuck these guys
So let’s say the guy making $19/hr and the guy making $50/hr come together to take on the really rich guy, what then? They kill the rich guy and take his money? And do what with it? Do they split it evenly, or do they end up fighting each other for it? And what happens when that money runs out? Because it will run out. You give somebody who’s used to living paycheck to paycheck a few million bucks and they will spend it. And once they have the money, aren’t they then the rich guy? Meaning now they would be the target of other working class people? Is the goal to become a rich asshole? Or is the goal for everyone to make $19/hr?
Obviously the problem is still relying on transactional society when we have the capability to become a post scarcity society.
We have lazy bums now under capitalism. We’d have lazy bums under socialism too, but they wouldn’t be an easy mark for the ultra rich to distract the working class with. They’d be free to pursue their interests.
just to clarify, “lazy bums” doesn’t apply to the guy making $4000/s while wiping his ass and furiously posting on twitter?
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“Lazy bums”
Did you know a typical “hunter gatherer” worked about 20 hours a week, with the rest of the time for fucking, eating, and talking bullshit?
Even peasants in much of medieval Europe had it better. They used to get months off every year, just sat out winter.
We weren’t evolved to work 80 hours a week for our lifetime. It’s fucked
You give somebody who’s used to living paycheck to paycheck a few million bucks and they will spend it.
So they become job creators?
Is the goal to become a rich asshole? Or is the goal for everyone to make $19/hr?
Well I guess those are definitely the only possible outcomes, aren’t they?
Well I guess those are definitely the only possible outcomes, aren’t they?
No. Those aren’t the only possibilities. I think there are others. So, what are they?
The ultimate answer is to eliminate money and wage labor entirely in favor of a gift economy, as practiced in parts of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, and depicted in The Dispossessed.
That would also mean all of us would only need to work about 2 to 3 months out of the year to maintain the base needs of everyone, with the rest of the year being free time to do with as you please. The lack of profit motive would also set us up to stop the progression of climate change before it destroys humanity and most other life on earth.
Gift economies favor the rich, because the are the ones who can gift the most. A gift economy obscures the power and transactions. It replaces direct transactions with indirect ones. Money makes it transparent, flexible, and decoupled.
In a gift economy you depend on the goodwill of the rich. Meaning you have far stricter social control and restrictions on your behavior.
A gift economy also doesn’t favor redistribution in practice. You have to stay in the good graces with the rich in order to survive. That means you have to gift your best gifts to the rich to curry favor.
A gift economy encourages strong social bonds. However that means neurodivergent people, and people with below average social skills, will be disadvantaged. Narcissistic sociopaths will be more empowered than even now.
lack of profit motive
Humans are social animals. There will always be desirable and rare things. People also want to improve their living conditions. Even without money, this will remain the same.
I agree. It’s going to be a lot more personal favor and nepotism. People skills and social capital are going to dominate society. Sounds like hell.
There are other ways to do this
It fits more with a more traditional family, clan, feudal, and religion based system than contemporary individualism. That’s not inherently bad, but a huge difference.
Gift giving would be formalized, ritualized, and kept track off. For example Turkish people tend to have big marriage parties with hundreds of guests. The gifts given to the couple are carefully documented and tracked by the family. Depending on the value of the gift you and your family will receive favors, opportunities, or not be invited to the cousin‘s upcoming wedding, leading to social exclusion.
A gift economy is an economy based on favors and bribes.
Japanese culture might potentially be a good fit for this type of society. Complex manners and etiquette, prioritize group over the individual, favor of conformity and hierarchy, value specialized skills highly, also high honesty and honor.
There would be no rich in a fully libertarian socialist society, as it would be extremely difficult to accumulate wealth when there is no exploitative power over others, and where anything that isn’t able to be created by an individual can only be created in a voluntary worker cooperative where everyone benefits equally.
If all basic needs are freely lent out in a library economy, and everyone participating in the 2 to 3 months of yearly work equally benefitted from it in the form of free housing, food, healthcare - and public transportation and private property is abolished (distinct from personal property), then there would be virtually no avenues for an individual to accumulate enough personal property to wield any sort of substantive power over others.
difference between private and personal property
Personal property is classified as what an individual person or family can actively use themselves.
If you begin hoarding more than you or your family can realistically use, the excess is no longer considered personal property, but private property, which may get you ejected from that community if you actively hoard under a libertarian socialist society and you refuse to stop.
Quoting someone else:
I like to link the word “private” with “privation” or “deprivation”. Private property is easily identifiable by its effects on others, specifically, it’s deprivation. There are hundreds of thousands of hammers. Having one doesn’t deprive anyone of anything. At most only one person can use the hammer.
A house is usable by an entire family, and if I own it but don’t use it myself, my ownership deprives an entire family of its use. That scales to apartment buildings pretty easily. Then there’s farms where basically it’s impossible for one person to do all of the work on a farm or eat all of the products of a farm, but my ownership has the effect of depriving anyone the right to work there or the right to consume its products. A factoryn is truly impossible for one person to use, but my ownership of it allows me to deprive everyone of its products unless they meet my price demands and also allows me to deprive everyone of use of the factory to make anything at all.
Private property entails a deprivation of society of socially necessary commodities.
With the elimination of private property, and basic needs a human right, that would leave the gift economy on top of that, which would realistically be limited to just what individuals can create and share amongst themselves.
Libertarian socialist?
Either you’re describing anarchism with new words or you’ve got some really weird views.
Like libraries are a clear no-no under libertarian ideology because it “perturbs the market”. If access to something is free then you destroy competition which “breeds innovation” or some shit…
I’ve just never heard of a libertarian library… It’s so antithetical to the concept!
Either you’re describing anarchism with new words or you’ve got some really weird views.
It’s not new, I assure you. Libertarian Socialist is label that goes back to 1872. It’s often synonymous with Anarchism, which I do consider myself to be, but I sometimes use Libertarian-Socialist since it doesn’t immediately bring to mind the concept of chaos or bomb throwing that people unfamiliar with Anarchism may attribute to it.
Libertarian alone also used to refer to left-wing anarchist types, but the term was co-opted by right-wing free-market ancap type folks a while back. I’m just doing my part to reclaim it :)
I had noticed the tension between right and left wing libertarian concepts. Very interesting stuff. I suspect on Lemmy anarchist or anarchosocialist will get more love than libertarian-socialist. But that’s an interesting name to use in public because it invites questions rather than fear of ANARCHY!
since it doesn’t immediately bring to mind the concept of chaos or bomb throwing that people unfamiliar with Anarchism may attribute to it.
Anarchists are the ones that created that view in the first place. If you’re ashamed of it, perhaps you aren’t really meant for anarchism.
Anarchists have never been for lawless chaos, that’s been put on them in a decades long smear campaign.
There was a time 100 years ago when ‘Propaganda of the deed’ was seen as a viable method toward waking up the masses, but it was quickly found to actually do the opposite of what they intended, and Anarchists today generally do not endorse such methods. I’m not ashamed of it, I’m just trying to avoid knee-jerk reactions from decades of anti-anarchist propaganda.
It’s not a zero sum game
Is the goal to become a rich asshole?
No, the goal is to avoid that such stupidly huge wealth inequalities to even exist
Is this a copypasta?
No.
Is it mayonnaise?
Only if mayonnaise is an instrument
The goal is to evenly distribute the wealth such that everyone has what they need to survive and then if you still have enough wealth left over (if the wealthy class were dismantled we would), you make sure everyone has enough to be comfortable. You take the business assets and you share ownership with the people working in those businesses. You establish democratic structures inside those businesses such that the workers choose who is in charge and what everyone is paid. Any amount of money an individual makes is supplemental to basic income that pays for your needs. Establish a wealth cap such that if your income exceeds it, the funds are distributed back down to the needs of society. Things like education and medicine could be entirely funded through excess earnings and a proper tax structure. A wealth cap means that oppressive amounts of liquid funds can’t be used to control people or lobby governments.
These are very very basic ideas. Not at all difficult to wrap your head around. And people are angry because we are constantly being told by the boots on our necks that it won’t work and that’s why we won’t even try. But in reality, the reason we won’t try is because the wealthy will lose their massive wealth. Wealth that most of them lucked into. This has nothing to do with how hard you work or how smart you are. It has everything to do with who is in control and who is not.
The goal is to evenly distribute the wealth such that everyone has what they need to survive and then if you still have enough wealth left over (if the wealthy class were dismantled we would), you make sure everyone has enough to be comfortable. You take the business assets and you share ownership with the people working in those businesses.
I think that’s a very nice idea. But I think you’re going to have a very hard time getting enough people to support it.
For a very long time I considered myself a democratic socialist. I joined the Democratic Socialists of America eight years ago, but I left after just a few years. To me, democratic socialism just made so much sense. I thought, this is the solution. I was convinced that Democratic socialism, along with environmental sustainability, was the future. Boy, was I wrong. Very few people shared my view. After a while I realized it was futile.
Most people who would read this cartoon don’t want to overthrow and replace the system, they just want the money. They’d prefer the $4 million, but they’d settle for the $50 /hr. You can tell them there’s a better way, but your words will just fall on deaf ears. They ain’t interested. They just want the money.
There won’t be an awareness campaign followed by a wave of socialist political movements that sweep the parliaments and governments of the world. There won’t be a glorious proletarian revolution, which sees the workers seize the means of production. A post capitalist society will one day emerge, but it will only be after capitalism has collapsed, taking the modern world down with it. Maybe on the other side of that, democratic socialism might be possible, in some small pockets of what’s left of humanity. But it will only be on small scales. Democratic socialism is incompatible with empires, and other large, complex civilizations. So any democratic socialist societies that do exist will be relatively small. Not that’s a bad thing. Not at all. In fact, I think it’s much more sustainable. But that means no dynamic, fast growing, expansionist civilizations. Again, better, more sustainable, but much different than the world we know today.
But if this happens at all, it’ll be long after I’m dead.
The “socialism only works at small scales” argument is tired, lazy, and boring.
Explain why. Be honest with me and yourself. And if you start in about “but the oil is funding that”, yes exactly. That’s how it should work, the USA gives away billions of dollars to capitalists every day with it’s mineral riches.
Democratic socialism (or social democracy… the definitions are not crisp or distinct) is already working in several Nordic countries of millions. Together they have populations of tens of millions. We can argue definitions if you like, but they’re much closer. So much closer that I’ll take that as the first several steps in our journey as a society.
Even if for some weird reason democratic socialism won’t ‘work’ at the size of hundreds of millions when it works at the scale of tens of millions, capitalism is currently falling flat in the USA and dozens of other countries, and offers much worse outcomes for 99.9% of it’s population all the while.
Democratic socialism is already working in several Nordic countries of millions.
Those countries are social democracies, not democratic socialist. Democratic socialism and social democracy are different systems. I know it sounds like splitting hairs, but they really are distinct.
Social democracy is a mostly capitalist economy with a democratic government that has a progressive tax system that funds a social welfare system and basic, universal public services. Social democracy does exist in many nations around the world today. Even the US has hada version of this model in the past.
Democratic socialism is a socialist economy with a democratic government. Most services would be provided by community or government owned non-profit organizations. Some for-profit businesses might exist but they would be worker owned. Unlike social democracy, Democratic socialism has never actually been tried. It’s entirely theoretical.
Together they have populations of tens of millions.
Yeah, tens of millions. Not 350 million like the US. Of the top ten democracies, according to the democracy index, all have populations under 20 million, and most have populations under 10 million. Clearly, social democracy has a population limit. I believe democratic socialism would too.
Correlation does not imply causation. Show me a mechanism, with evidence. The mechanism I propose is that if a society looks even slightly too leftist the billionaire class does everything they can to destroy or sabotage it.
Also, there isn’t a crisp definition or delineation between a social democracy and a democratic socialist one. Again- quibble over definitions as much as you want. A social democracy is several important steps in the right direction.
And capitalistic centrism / authoritarianism is NOT “working” globally. It’s just managed to kick the can down the curb for a while.
Correlation does not imply causation. Show me a mechanism, with evidence.
I was thinking about it and it came to me. It’s actually simple math.
Norway is the world’s top democracy, according to the world democracy index. Norway has a total population of about 5.6 million people. Their parliament has 169 seats. That means each seat represents about 33,000 people. The US, on the other hand, has a total population of about 341 million people. The US Congress has 535 total seats (435 in the House of Representatives and 100 in the Senate). That’s about 637,000 people per seat. For each US Congress seat to represent 33,000 Americans, our Congress would need to grow to about 10,300 seats. Obviously, that’s not realistic. It’s also not realistic to act like a representative can represent 637,000 people as well as 33,000 people.
There’s your evidence.
That doesn’t show that democratic socialism or social democracy won’t work.
Correlation does not imply causation.
That doesn’t mean the correlation is irrelevant. The fact is, not a single one of the top ten democracies on the planet today have populations above 20 million. Not a single one. Source. I don’t necessarily know why that is, but it is.
I don’t think modern global capitalist civilization will peacefully transition to social democracy, or democratic socialism, whatever you want to call it. I think the capitalist global economy will continue growing until we hit some hard limits to growth, at which point it will collapse, which could be sooner than most realize. It’s not going to be pleasant. Global population could decrease significantly, average life expectancy could decline, as could total global industrial output and average living standards. Who knows what will come out on the other side of that.
Explain why socialism works in large scales. What’s your best example of a LARGE SCALE socialist society ever in the history of Earth? You’re very favorite. Norway?
(not a trick question)
Nope.
The claim is “it doesn’t work”. The proof is due on behalf of the people making the claim.
I’m not making a claim. I’m asking “tell me why, specifically, this won’t work but other systems do.”
lol, I find it funny that you went straight to murder and not taxation or seizure of assets but OK lets go with your take.
you actually think these business can’t survive without their billionaire founders/investors, nieve. Those people built the position they did through deal making, not some special big brain strat, nothing special about them really and nothing that cant be repeated by someone else, easily replaced practically speaking.
also at what point do we consider hoarding a crime, many would say that line was already crossed a while ago. how much needs to be stolen from society to warrant a death penalty. “a human life cant be messured in dolla-” yes it can and has many a time, how much does it cost to raise a child? between 250k to 500k, how many live could be raised if those billionaire stopped with their tax havens, extractive deals, crocked backroom deals, and straight up fraudulent practices. The blatant manipulation and funding of disinformation and lobbying efforts to further and further fill their pockets while closing of services to the public, some vital some not so vital, either or could easily be taken as an attack on the majority of people in the country and this is barely scratching the surface of their collective offenses.
its easy to pick on the “few” when their crimes are some commonplace yet their are always highly regarded individual like you arguing on their behalf. i think we’ll go with the taxation and or seizure of assets route to make things clean but i could care less about their well being at this point cuz they’ve made it clear they don’t give a fuck about mine.
The whole system is fucked, which includes them or their peers, and people don’t want to hear it. As evidenced by the downvotes-for-disagreement rather than upvotes-for-discussion. It’s not the billionaires themselves. That’s a symptom of the problem. As you’ve outlined eliminating billionaires by whatever means, is not going fix the fundamental problem. It’s nothing but short term solution Some other group will become the rich and powerful. People see that take and get angry at the wrong thing.
The goal is for the rich guy to make 2,00 dollars an hour if his labor actually deserves that and the poor guy to make 20 and the range between to actually be filled up by ability and effort vs inheritance and manipulation of the playing field.
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It’s so cute when people who have never authentically considered another perspective weigh in on what leftists think and why.
Can you do people who can’t afford cancer treatment next?
the medical system in the US is fucked because the system doesn’t actually care about the health of the people; obviously that sucks idk what you expect me to say
I wonder what system people are increasingly upset about that doesn’t care about people’s health, but instead enriching the wealthiest people in the country?
i’d say it’s christianity or the concept of natural law that’s historically been pushed by christianity.
it roughly says that there are natural laws that are derived from god (i.e. unchangeable circumstances) and are therefore unchangeable themselves. they typically revolve around (political/military) power being the center and origin of all law; it roughly corresponds to the nazi principle “might makes right” which says that if you’re too weak, you have to adhere to stronger people’s rules.
that historically influenced US politics a lot. that’s why you have the modern concept of “when people are 60 years old and they get sick from cancer, well that’s natural and therefore good and therefore we shouldn’t do anything about it.” i think that’s the major influence, not so much about shareholder value.
in fact medical companies would make a shitton of money if they treated every disease. it’s actually hurting the economy that the US does not spend more money on social healthcare. but ideology seems to be more important to the US government in this case.
edit: eh after reading the above wikipedia article it speaks mostly about the medieval concept of natural law but that’s not how the term is used these days. these days the term natural law mostly refers to things such as anarchy (as it’s used by the media) and doing away with a (human-made-rules)-based world order. in other words “eat shit, be free” but for politicians.
it’s used like this: “i am a politician. i want to suppress other people. because i have this natural urge, surely it must be a natural thing to do. that’s why i do it”. while things that would limit this behavior such as democratically elected laws and human-made laws such as the legal system are ignored because they are “not natural and therefore not to be taken too seriously”. trump is the best example of this.
Our economic system is not Christianity.
You really don’t know why we have lobbyists pouring money into Congress to prevent us from having universal healthcare? You think it’s all religious, and in no way related to the parasite class rent seeking in the most depraved way possible?
Yeah. I bet it’s because Jeebus.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, you’ve clearly spent a “lot” of “time” “thinking” about “this.”
You think it’s all religious, and in no way related to the parasite class rent seeking in the most depraved way possible?
turn the question the other way around and ask yourself what motivates people to seek money beyond what a single person can spend. there’s no short-term benefit in it so i argue there must be a long-term trajectory behind it. what is that and what do you call it?
They expect you to regurgitate Marxist or libertarian socialist rhetoric. Or at least social democratic rhetoric. Because that will show that you’re the right kind of person with the right kind of ideas. Whether or not it will accomplish anything is another matter. I’m not sure they care about that. I mean, they probably care about it, but they care about ideological purity more.
I’ve never seen an AFD guy on lemmy, this is a first for me.
what’s AFD?
German nazi party V2
The hand up your ass and the words in your mouth.
Honesty, I thought you were a far-right german, based on how you called all leftists lazy and your username and instance being german. But I see you deleted your previous comment, so I looked at a bit of your comment history, and I was apparently mistaken. My apologies for lumping you in with neo-nazis.
I just cannot fathom what brings someone to make blanket statements about giant groups of people like that, other than ignorance and/or propaganda indoctrination.
i think my worldview is well-founded and actually reasonable once you explore it more; maybe i just phrased it really badly in my comment above. well anyways i deleted it because i noticed this thread develops into a shitshow and i’d like to stay on serious discussions only.
Well lets have a serious discussion. According to your worldview, why is there such wealth inequality in the USA?
These are just some charts that display some basic data, of course the matter is more complicated.
like i realize now that my original wording was rude when i said that “leftists are lazy” because it is seen as an insult by the people. which at the moment that i said it was not at all meant as an insult. and i support worker’s rights overall, i think my comment just came out wrong. anyways, i’m closing this thread now because it’s too deep into mess.
Why is leftist in scare quotes
it’s not scare quotes, it’s just quotes because people call themselves leftist so it’s a self-describing term. i always put those in quotes.
also note that there’s no universal agreement on what “leftist” means. note i’m not putting that in scare quotes but normal quotes to distinguish the word from what it refers to. it’s famous that leftists always infight because they can’t agree on what leftism actually means.
I’m not necessarily arguing for or against capitalism. This cartoon is something I would’ve up-voted not too long ago. I understand the sentiment. But I don’t think a lot of the people who up-vote this kind of stuff really think it through. Some do. Some people have thoroughly thought out theories about revolutions overthrowing capitalism and establishing some kind of post capitalist society. I know I did. But I am as certain as I can be about anything that the vast majority of people making $19/hr, and the vast majority of people making $50/hr, don’t necessarily want to all join together, violently overthrow capitalism and create a post capitalist, moneyless society.
The thing is, I don’t think the majority of people who up-vote a cartoon like this know what they want. They’re mad, they’re frustrated, they think it’s unfair, but they don’t necessarily know what they want to do about it. More than anything I just want people to think about it. What’s the problem? Is there a problem? If so, what is it exactly? What do you want to do about it? Revolution? Socialism? Something else? If so, what?
I think people want to not be hungry, I think they want to have time for leisure, I think they want to not worry about whether they will pay the rent or put groceries in their fridge (forget about a vacation).
I think people want a guarantee that after working for 40 years they can retire and spend some of their life freely.
I think people want to know that they won’t go bankrupt because they get cancer.
I think you’re making it way more complicated than it is.
If the top 1% wasn’t collecting an equal share of wealth to the bottom 40% people these things could be possible.
I think that’s a fair assessment. That being said, you think I’m overcomplicating, but I think you’re oversimplifying. I don’t think all of what you just said encompasses all human needs, wants and desires.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. That’s what people want, and they can’t have what they want because the 1% have too much of the wealth. What should we do about it?
I never intended to posit my comment as encompassing all human wants and desires, but I do believe I have touched on the “basic bill of rights” that most people would agree on.
Tax the excessively wealthy.
I’m not an economist, so I won’t sit here and give a number of what level of wealth should be taxed, but I think it fits under “I know it when I see it”
If you’re buying multiple vacation properties, if you own a yacht or a private jet, you’re probably it.
This comic isn’t about any of that stuff.
This comic shows that when people who can barely make it complain, the average middle/upper middle class person get upset and fights them. It also shows that this dynamic greatly benefits the very people who benefit unfairly from underpaying the work of the poor (and the middle class).
Upvoting it is just a recognition that this dynamic hurts us all. Maybe someone who sees this will think twice when they hear a poor person complain about their living conditions. Think past their reactionary reflex. If the middle class doesn’t fight the poor, the poor can move past that obstacle at least. Maybe if they REALLY think about it they’ll join in solidarity, make it easier for the poor to fight for better working conditions. Maybe they won’t, it’s just a meme.
You’re right, the current revolutionary meta isn’t worked out enough or universally agreed upon enough to be plausible yet… But this comic isn’t about that. It’s just about the fact that this fight helps the exploiters and we shouldn’t fight people who want better working and living conditions. This comic can be fixed a minimum wage hike and a tax on the wealthy to mitigate the inflationary pressure this can create.
You’re getting down voted because you’re protecting a complex set of ideas over a simple cartoon and stating that your interpretation is the only logical conclusion/solution proposal of this cartoon. I don’t see any solution proposal here. It feels like a bad faith argumentation on your part against something no one really said. People don’t generally support arguments they see as bad faith.
Explain to me why shareholders, who do exactly 0 work and sit on their asses all day, should receive free money?
Why are people allowed to be parasites on society just because they have money?
Capitalism values capital and socialism values what?
Yeah no, fuck them too. Those people rarely produce anything of value, just stress and using workers as their personal trauma dump.
Who exactly? Middle management? They listen that complaints from top, but still they are just workers ;)
no they are not, they are actively supporting these systems by being little brown nosing shitweasel. Iv met plenty that actually act like this. to the point that im willing to guess that some of the detractors on here are these types of people, and they’re proving the sketch correct. working together isn’t the answer. if it were, we’d have solved the problem by now and since we have nothing more to offer these cretins that they cant get from their boss. the only answer is to either walk around or push them out of the way.
(fuuuuuck i didn’t see the winky face)
Yes, middle management. And with that being said I think I might know what you do for work.
I don’t think you’ve thought to deeply about this. Look up triangulation.
Not a woman to be seen lol
The dollar sign belongs before the number.
Presumably someone from a non-english speaking country made this, considering the dots used as digit grouping separators.
Having the $ at the end would be nice though. It’s nice having your units in a single fraction instead of at different sides of the number. It could then be consistent with how we write all our other units.
We don’t write m 1000/s, for example. We write 1000 m/s. We even say it this way already “4 million dollars per hour”.
4,000,000 $/h makes way more sense than $4,000,000/h to be honest.
Psychopathic USians saying “dollars fifty”, while the rest of the world says “fifty dollars”.
In the U.S., the almighty Dollar comes before everything. I’m surprised we don’t treat it like question marks and exclamation points in Spanish where if a sentence contains a Dollar sign, the sentence begins with an upside-down Dollar sign and ends with a Dollar sign.
eh, same dif
The hooked nose was never code for anything. Move along.
Good point, I missed that microaggression.
didnt catch that actually
You’re grasping at straws to find a victim. Have a look at some 1920-30 propaganda if you really need a comparison.
